Never miss a local story.

A place like UNC always was, though the Tar Heels – like every other major-conference school – never recruited Holcomb. And so Jenkins came up with a different plan. If schools wouldn’t come to Holcomb, then Jenkins would bring Holcomb to various schools.

There was, for a time, an arrangement with Duke. Holcomb planned to walk on there.

“And then that just didn’t work out,” Holcomb said after a recent practice. “And my coach made a few calls, got me in here.”

Here is UNC. Holcomb stood on the practice field where he’d just completed another long practice as the Tar Heels’ starting weak-side linebacker.

He’s a very bright kid. He can really run. He’ll hit you.

Larry Fedora

It’s the position vacated by Shakeel Rashad, who was a senior last season, and it’s a position Holcomb was never quite sure he’d be in – starting or otherwise. Here’s how it all happened: Jenkins, the high school coach, had a relationship with Dan Disch, UNC’s former defensive backs coach.

Disch liked Holcomb enough to give him a chance to walk onto the team. And so Holcomb did, before the 2014 season – a season that was disastrous for the defense and one that led to the firing of the old defensive coaching staff and the hiring of a new one, led by Gene Chizik.

Throughout most of spring practice in 2015, Holcomb was still a little-known walk-on. Opportunities for significant playing time in practice remained scarce.

“Wasn’t getting too many reps,” Holcomb said. “And then they just threw me on (the field in) that last scrimmage. I got a bunch of reps.”

Which led to a second-string position a season ago, backing up Rashad, and led to now: a starting position entering a season with the highest expectations surrounding the Tar Heels in nearly 20 years.

All the clichés are true, Holcomb said. Yes, he used the lack of big-school scholarship offers as motivation. Yes, those slights helped fuel weight-room workouts that have helped him go from 185 pounds to 220.

The story isn’t that simple, though. That version leaves out all the doubt.

“At the moment I didn’t think I could (do this),” he said of when he graduated high school. “I’m going to be honest. I thought I was just going to almost be a regular student at some point, and just go to college.

“But my (high school) coach told me I could do bigger things.”

Eventually his college coach agreed. Larry Fedora, entering his fifth season as UNC’s head coach, recently said Holcomb “has taken advantage of all of his opportunities.”